Texas Bakers Receive Death Threats for Offering Referral Rather Than Making Cake for ‘Gay Wedding’

LONGVIEW, Texas — A Christian-identifying couple in Texas is receiving death threats after offering a referral to two homosexual men rather than being involved with their same-sex ceremony by making the cake for the reception.

According to reports, Ben Valencia and Luis Marmolejo went to Kern’s Bakery in Longview earlier this month with a photograph of what they wanted their wedding cake to look like.

“We just went in there to get a quote,” Valencia told the Longview News Journal, explaining that he and Marmolejo talked with co-owner Edie Delorme for some time without issue. “Then she says, ‘Who’s this for?’ We looked at each other.”

That’s when Delorme, who attends a Baptist church, explained that because of her faith, the bakery could not be involved with the event.

“It’s not against people or what they choose to be part of,” she told the men.

Delorme says that she offered to provide recommendations for other bakeries, but Valencia and Marmolejo just walked out.

The men then took to the media several days later, which in turn contacted the bakery about the alleged discrimination. Delorme said that she would understand if a business didn’t want association with a particular event, and noted that Kern’s Bakery has turned down cakes for other reasons.

“We don’t do alcohol-related cakes or risque [cakes],” she told reporters. “We’ve turned down cake for, ‘Can you make a giant Skoal can?’ … It’s not that we single out one [reason].”

Delorme said that she and her husband David have also discussed their apprehension about association with events that involve remarriage after divorce.

“We feel like if we are going to be putting our name on something, we want it to encourage godly values,” she stated.

After the matter went public, many lashed out at the Delormes, posting negative, vulgar and angry reviews on Yelp, such as “See you in Hell,” “Their cakes taste like [expletive]” and “They farted in my cupcakes.” But some posted positive reviews to show support.

“These bakers did NOT deny gays business because they were gay. They chose not to make a gay wedding cake. If a … homosexual came in and asked for a normal old birthday cake, they wouldn’t kick him out or deny him service,” one reviewer named John wrote. “So, sorry to deny your self-victimization pity party, but there is no discrimination happening here. None. At all.”

“Sorry for the vile response. The hate is thick with this crowd,” another named Mark wrote. “Keep the faith and keep making all the yummy baked goods! See you next time I come through town!”

Yelp says that it will be taking down some of the comments because they are not bona fide reviews of personal customer service.

Michael Berry, an attorney with First Liberty in Plano, told the Houston Chronicle that the Delormes have been receiving death threats as a result of the matter gong public.

“It’s a mom-and-pop shop, and when they start getting death threats there is something seriously wrong,” he stated. “It gets really ugly and unfortunate but that has a very real effect on the Delormes and their employees.”

“When they start to receive threats towards their family and their business simply because of their religious convictions, there’s something wrong with that picture,” Berry repeated to Fox’s Todd Starnes.

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Gott Mit Uns!

“It’s not against people or what they choose to be part of,” she told the men.

Well, it sure sounds like it is.

Josey

I will be against what kills and sends people to hell and that is what God our Creator is against, He paid a heavy price to give us salvation, that is why He takes things that kill and bring death seriously, He has no pleasure in the eternal damnation of those who will not repent and live according to His righteous plan and I will not be ashamed to say so.

Straight Shooter

Well, hey, I’m glad these people have their priorities straight. Being refused a cake is definitely worth killing over.

The Last Trump

Just what we have come to expect from the “tolerance” crowd, isn’t it? Disgraceful.
Nobody’s buying it anymore. The LGBT movement has shown it’s true ugly and intolerant colours over and over again. Ultra aggressive, militant and downright nasty.
I particularly enjoyed the,“We just went in there to get a quote,” part!
Uh huh. Riiiight. The Christian witch hunt continues…..
Hey! Hateful and intolerant ones! WE just want to be left alone!
Sound familiar?

Gott Mit Uns!

Cut the Cake Bakery in Florida received death threats for refusing to make a hate cake for rabid anti-gay fundamentalist Chr-stian and disgraced former pastor Joshua Feuerstein.

Gott Mit Uns!

And Azucar bakery in Colorado received death threats for refusing to adorn cakes with anti-gay messages. There are idiots who make death threats on both sides of this issue.

WorldGoneCrazy

There is no Gaystapo, Trump! Now, everyone stop asking so many questions.

“Just what we have come to expect from the “tolerance” crowd, isn’t it?”

One, you don’t have any idea as to the sexuality of those posting the comments. Two, to suggest that a few comments are representative of the views of an entire group is simply without reason. it would be like me saying that because a Christian killed an abortion doctor that all Christians believe it is OK to kill abortion doctors. Or that because some Christian preachers have called for the murder or incarceration of gay people, those views are representative of all Christians.

Ambulance Chaser

Why is it indicative of the attitudes of the entire pro-gay side when some of theirs do it, but not of the entire anti-gay side when some of theirs do it?

Guest

Why are the death threats never actually shared? None of the posted Yelp reviews are death threats.

Are these phone calls? Are the police involved? Did they happen at all?

That they’ve made it clear this is religious discrimination of the public by the business should make a bit different.

bowie1

“See you in Hell” sounds pretty threatening to me.

Guest

Well eventually, we all die. I’d take that as a prophecy myself, a consequence of their actions.

Peter Leh

i see many post from Christians predicting the gays eternal destination.

Emmanuel

Keeping stand tall and with your head held high Edie. You have refused other cakes and keep refusing to make cakes that you don’t agree with.

Peter Leh

– jefferson davis?

Bertha Warren

This happening, to Belevers are nor new. John said, there is cost of following Jesus. Following Jesus will cause Believers their world goods and life. I am thankful Jesus has prepared a place for Believers, that willing to die for His name sake.

Peter Leh

choice does not a martyr make.

it was not long ago the black person was not served.

It is a better day today, do you not agree? Or should
we long for the “good ole days”?

Bertha Warren

Like John said count the cost of following Jesus, it is Blood covenant. We as people have gain major ground. Only the way, we for got who cause this to happen. Jesus. Our great great grand parent was answer, by way of Civil Right movements. Jesus saw us blameless toward him. We was not killing eac other during 50th and 60 th. We were clothes knit community looked out for each other. We have lost love forChrist and love for ourselves. We stand lot emprovement , in LOVE, if we loved each other as people black on crime would not be happening. You talking woman who came out the fifties and sixties and seventies I know how it should be.

Peter Leh

Seems we should be fighting for all americans to have a seat at the counter. For all to have justice.

There is no persecution here as the business is in the right to turn gays away. When the law changes they will have to change their business policy to accommodate both their conscience AND the state regulations

WorldGoneCrazy

They were not turning gays away. They turned the event away. They have served gays in the past. Why do you lie and yet still use the “nun” symbol?

acontraryview

Events don’t order cakes. People order cakes.

WorldGoneCrazy

Which is why this was not discrimination against people. They chose to not participate in an event – they had and continue to serve gays.

Cady555

People wanted to order a cake likely much like other cakes sold by the bakery. The bakers did tell people I will sell this cake to someone else but not you.

WorldGoneCrazy

“People wanted to order a cake likely much like other cakes sold by the bakery.”

Only if you think that a wedding is like a birthday.

“The bakers did tell people I will sell this cake to someone else but not you.”

Citation please.

Guest

He’s paraphrasing, the fact they have sold wedding cakes to others but not these is all the cite needed.

WorldGoneCrazy

No citation for the quotes. Got it.

Guest

Oh, I already said they weren’t quotes. No reasonable person thinks paraphrasing situations are quotes.

WorldGoneCrazy

Still no citation – quotes or otherwise – got it.

Just concede, and admit it was a strawman by Cady.

Guest

Again, I don’t think you understand the difference between a paraphrase and a straw man. Since he didn’t use his statement to prove a point it isn’t a straw man, but it was a 2. the act or process of restating or rewording. the situation.

Cady555

They sell fancy decorated cakes. They refused to sell one to this couple. How is that unclear?

WorldGoneCrazy

No citation for the quotes here. Got it.

Guest

Baking a cake isn’t participation in an event any more than the rolls I buy makes the bakery a participant in my evening dinner.

SCOTUS just recently ruled on this, atheists hearing a prayer is not participation in the prayer. Similarly making a cake that will be used in a wedding isn’t participation in the wedding.

WorldGoneCrazy

“Baking a cake”

Strawman.

Guest

That’s all the bakery is doing, I think you don’t know what a strawman is.

Baking a cake is not participating in an event. Regardless, it doesn’t matter in this instance as she does not live in a location where sexuality is a protected category. She is free to discriminate on the basis of sexuality all she cares to.

WorldGoneCrazy

No discrimination. No pity party for the Gaystapo. They don’t want to make a cake (and presumably deliver it to a non-marriage) that would be obscene to their religious views, and in any other pornographic context, this would be a non-story. But, gays have a faux persecution complex that makes Christians look tame by comparison. (I know, I know, I was there in the 60’s when gays had those firehoses put on them. :-))

acontraryview

Clearly discrimination and where she lives, quite legal. Just because it is “obscene to their religious views” does not mean it is not discrimination. By its very nature it is discrimination.

Oh, please. There is nothing more severe than the belief by some Christians that because their religion is no longer being given a place of privilege and that they are no longer being allowed to restrict the rights of others based upon the Christian belief system. that amounts to “persecution”.

When was the last time you heard of a Christian being turned away from a business because of their faith? Or a non-Christian pastor preaching that Christians should be killed by the government or rounded up and put behind electric fences? Or that Christians were out to destroy the country?

WorldGoneCrazy

No discrimination – you just have a need to believe it so that you can pretend you have an objective purpose to your life.

You are free to believe your own delusions that Christians are not being persecuted around the world and that gays had firehoses put on them and were denied places at lunch counters, but please don’t expect the rest of us to fall for your myths.

acontraryview

I never said that Christians are not being persecuted around the world.

I never said that gays had firehouses put on them an were denied places at lunch counters.

How do you reconcile lying with your supposed faith in Christianity?

I’ll ask again:

When was the last time you heard of a Christian being turned away from a business because of their faith? Or a non-Christian pastor preaching that Christians should be killed by the government or rounded up and put behind electric fences? Or that Christians were out to destroy the country?

WorldGoneCrazy

ACV, when you use the word “lying,” you are engaging in projection. You know darn well that Christians are being persecuted for not baking and delivering a gay cake or conducting floral arrangements for a gay “wedding.” I would say that 6 figure judgements in such silly situations are indeed persecution. Now, those are Christians being “turned away from their own businesses!”

If you had an ounce of compassion, you would agree. But, you can’t even figure out that an actual court case for an expectation of privacy in slavery is “mind your own business” for slavery.

So, whatever your level of absurdity, you would not know the truth from a lie if your life depended on it.

acontraryview

“ACV, when you use the word “lying,” you are engaging in projection.”

If stating that someone said something that they did not say, as you did with me, is not lying, then what is it?

“You know darn well that Christians are being persecuted for not baking and delivering a gay cake or conducting floral arrangements for a gay “wedding.””

It would be beneficial if you had a better understanding of the word “persecution”. Here, I’ll help.

Persecution: “a program or campaign to exterminate, drive away, or subjugate people based on their membership in a religious, ethnic, social, or racial group”

Those individuals are not being “persecuted”. Rather, they are being prosecuted, defined as: “to institute legal proceedings against (a person).”

In other words, they are being held accountable to the law. Now, you may not agree with the law, and you are certainly free to work to get such laws changed, but that does not change the fact that those individuals are being “prosecuted”, not “persecuted”.

“I would say that 6 figure judgements in such silly situations are indeed persecution.”

You are certainly free to say whatever you care to, but your statement is false as such fines do not meet the definition of “persecution”.

“Now, those are Christians being “turned away from their own businesses!””

Please cite an example where a business owner refused to do business with himself.

“So, whatever your level of absurdity, you would not know the truth from a lie if your life depended on it.”

I think that better fits your example of projection.

WorldGoneCrazy

Now that I see you deny 41 peer-reviewed scientific sources for human life beginning at human conception, as well as two proofs that the expectation of privacy was used both in justifying slavery and abortion, I can see that you would not accept any evidence whatsoever on this issue as well.

You have closed yourself off to truth and are just another blind faith atheist. I got out just in time – before the descent into absurdity – thank God.

acontraryview

Now that I see you change the subject to avoid admitting you were wrong, it is clear that you lack integrity.

Quantz

He’s fond of saying “when I was an atheist”. I always wonder if he was any more reasonable then.

acontraryview

Unquestioned devotion to religious belief does tend to have a dampening affect on reason.

Quantz

He’s also big on shifting goalposts and using diversionary tactics. When those fail, it descends into name calling. Usually the same three or four

acontraryview

Unfortunate that people drop to that type of behavior rather than simply admit they are wrong. it shows a lack of both integrity and self-confidence.

Quantz

I rarely, rarely see fundamentalists admit to being wrong. That isn’t to say it doesn’t happen. I’m just saying in my own personal experience it is rare.

Projection also plays into it with these types too, using WGC as a convenient example, he’ll rage at you, call you baby killer, call you pro abort, call you slave trader, and then tell you that YOU are having a meltdown.

acontraryview

It’s sad, really.

Quantz

Worse than sad. Pathetic.

Basset_Hound

Specialty baker create custom pieces of edible art. They then send their employees to set up and serve the cake.

acontraryview

While you are certainly free to view a wedding cake as a piece of edible art, they are most certainly not “custom” to each individual. Most bakers have a book with pictures of cakes they have made and people can simply choose one.

I have been to many weddings. I have never been to one where employees of a bakery are there serving cake. Have you?

Basset_Hound

The point is not how I “view a wedding cake”, or what most bakers do. There are indeed bakers who create custom cakes, and advertise that they do so. The pictures they show in their galleries are to give their clients ideas so that they will know where to start when they consult with a client as to what is to be done.

But nevertheless, if a baker doesn’t want to open his business or deliver his cakes on certain days because he feels that doing so violates his religious beliefs, he should be free to do so.

If a baker doesn’t want to offer cakes or frostings flavored with coffee or alcoholic beverages for whatever reason, he should be free to do so.

If a baker doesn’t want to make a cake with “Happy Birthday, You Gold Digging Whore”, “Die A Painful Death, You Dickhead”, or any other sexually charged, crude message he should be free to do so.

If a baker doesn’t want to make a cake depicting sexually explicit images, he should be free to do so.

If a Jewish baker doesn’t want to make a cake saying “There is No God but Allah, an Muhammad is His Prophet”, he should be free to do so.

Likewise, a baker should be able to refuse to provide his services to an event that offends his religious sensibilities without receiving death threats or being sued into bankruptcy.

acontraryview

“The point is not how I “view a wedding cake””

Agreed.

“if a baker doesn’t want to open his business or deliver his cakes on certain days because he feels that doing so violates his religious beliefs, he should be free to do so.”

He is.

“If a baker doesn’t want to offer cakes or frostings flavored with coffee or alcoholic beverages for whatever reason, he should be free to do so.”

He is.

“If a baker doesn’t want to make a cake with “Happy Birthday, You Gold Digging Whore”, “Die A Painful Death, You Dickhead”, or any other sexually charged, crude message he should be free to do so.”

He is.

“If a baker doesn’t want to make a cake depicting sexually explicit images, he should be free to do so.”

He is.

“If a Jewish baker doesn’t want to make a cake saying “There is No God but Allah, an Muhammad is His Prophet”, he should be free to do so.”

He is.

“Likewise, a baker should be able to refuse to provide his services to an event that offends his religious sensibilities without receiving death threats”

You can’t control whether someone receives death threats. With that said, threatening to kill someone is a violation of the law.

“or being sued into bankruptcy.”

While there have been no instances of any baker being “sued into bankruptcy”, the results of lawsuits that arise when an individual violates the law can vary. it is unlikely, however, given the fines that are associated with violation of anti-discrimination laws, that any would result in bankruptcy.

Guest

Same excuse business used when they would allow non-whites to use a sub-set of what the offered. Didn’t work then or now.

WorldGoneCrazy

Strawman. And incredibly offensive to black people and those of us who were there during that time period.

Guest

All civil rights and trying to justify one and not the other is extremely offensive to people of faith who are being discriminated against as customers right now.

And you think I wasn’t there?

WorldGoneCrazy

I KNOW you were not there if you are equating this situation with the 1960’s. 🙂

Guest

Hmmm, now young do you think I am? I’m retired if that gives you any clues…

Peter Leh

BUS 101 and SOS regulations is for all to read and not a lie.

Nidalap

“choice does not a martyr make.”

Nor lack of cake discrimination. These folks were clearly targeted. You and I both know it. The difference is, you’re okay with that…

Peter Leh

“Nor lack of cake discrimination. These folks were clearly targeted.”

what difference does that make? She is clearly within the law. It is not the job of the business to teach the customer the law.

“You
and I both know it.”

WE do.

The difference is, you’re okay with that…”

with the law? I am. 🙂

Guest

So the customer could tell that a business was being run unethically before trying to place an order?

How did they do that exactly?

B David Greenwell

Easy, many Christian businesses place signs on the walls and in the windows displaying their faith. All you have to do is be able to read!

Guest

Since most Christian owned businesses would have just sold them the cake I don’t think that’s really a good indication in general, or a fact in this particular one. No indication of such things in the 3 pictures I can find of this particular business.

B David Greenwell

This is really simple! The people who brought the charges saw the signs in the shop and decided to try to use them in the hopes of getting a lawsuit issue out of it! It’s called targeting for the purpose of bringing a lawsuit! We don’t know how many shops they had to go to in order to find the perfect one!

Nidalap

Unethically? I see no lawsuit here against a business not operating in accord with the standards of their profession.
If you mean the definition pertaining to moral principals, who are you to try to impose your morality on anyone else? 🙂

Guest

Their profession? No no I am referring to American ethics, the acknowledgement that everyone has a God-given right to their own religious freedom even if someone thinks they are completely wrong.

An ethical American doesn’t apply religious litmus tests to customers they advertise to and invite to buy goods and services, such behavior is inherently unethical.

Nidalap

Ah. So morality it is then. And you justify imposing it by saying that ALL good Americans must believe that way. Very likely, the opposing side thinks the same. Luckily for you, you know you have the “right” morality…

Guest

Morality and ethics aren’t the same thing. Ethics is a science, a system built from postulates and religious freedom of the individual one of its core concepts.

And I don’t have to merely ‘know’ it, I can show it using the written blue prints for our shared ethics.

Angel Jabbins

Peter, it is not the same as not serving a black person. These guys were not denied service because they were gay…they could purchase cakes, cookies, bread…whatever they wanted in that store. Gay marriage, however, is a moral issue and people should be able to follow their conscience if they feel it is wrong. They feel strongly that, by baking the cake, they are approving of it, even encouraging it. The bakers referred them to another bakery that would do the cake, so they could get their same sex cake with no problem at all. They were not being denied a cake. There are plenty of bakeries that will bake the cake. People must be allowed to follow their religious convictions. If not, then you might as well just throw out the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Cady555

Serving bkacks and whites in the same restaurant was seen as immoral not too long ago. Segregation was a moral issue.

Now most of us see that view as ignorant.

The baker is being asked to sell the product they would sell to anyone else. It is none of their concern whether the costumer uses it as a centerpiece at a party or as a target at a gun range.

Guest

Yes it seems people have forgotten how things really are. People didn’t and don’t racially discriminate because someone clashes with the drapes, it was because of what they considered the qualities of that race have, e.g. members are ‘inferior’, ‘lazy’, ‘dirty’, ‘criminal’, ‘immoral’, cursed by God’ and more. Very similar to their reasonings we see here about gay people.

Either the business can sell something to people of all faiths respecting their constitutional right to think God blesses marriages regardless of the couple’s sexes, or they shouldn’t be offering it to the general public at all.

Angel Jabbins

If you go back and read the article, the bakers said they would also be hesitant to bake a cake in a situation where they knew it was for a remarriage after a divorce. They are not denying ALL service to gays or divorced people (as was the case for blacks during segregation). Anyone can go into their bakery and purchase their products. But, as business owners, they should be free to sell or not sell certain products, such as wedding cakes, if it means compromising their religious beliefs. (The baking of a wedding often also involves going to the wedding site to assemble the cake as well.)

You are right….segregation WAS a moral issue and so is homosexuality and gay marriage….a moral issue for people of faith. If you want to deny them the right to obey the tenets of their faith in order to push your own agenda done their throats…that is as bad as segregation….same thing. Gay people can obtain cakes…there is not shortage of bakeries who will bake the cake for them and this bakery even made a referral to one that would do it. Please don’t compare this with what happened to black people. That so belittles and minimizes the civil rights cause of the blacks. They couldn’t even set foot in most stores, FCOL.

“It is none of their concern whether the costumer uses it as a centerpiece at a party or as a target at a gun range”..

It may be none of YOUR concern what the cake is used for, but it is for these bakers and they should have a right to follow the dictates of their conscience….just as you are following yours. To force your conscience beliefs or lack of them on these people is fascism…. plain and simple.

Linda Falkner

Tough times make tough Christians. Good comes out of intended evil.

Peter Leh

hopefully we can all learn from their poor business decisions. Although in this case i believe this baker is within the law of texas

Bob Johnson

And no case has been filed against the bakery, just bad PR and possible threats. Those threats may cause the bakery to file suit.

DrewTwoFish

Tough times for Christians in America? Are you serious? Maybe “slightly uncomfortable times on the odd occasion.” Intended evil? They asked for a wedding cake, not the sacrifice of her first born.

I guess some push back after centuries of treating a certain set of people like sh*t = persecution.

Sherry patterson

I do not think refusing to bake a cake because of Christian values is a crime..if the gays want to fight about forcing people to make their cake..there are a whole lot of more important issues in this world..you all need to get on with yourselves and quit reminding us that there are 2 men/2 women having sex…WE DO NOT CARE OF YOUR CHOICES..live your life..we live ours..
us, Christians are way tired of your so called equal rights..they only gave you the right to marry, doesn’t mean we have to accept it, or cater to it.

Peter Leh

“I do not think refusing to bake a cake because of Christian values is a crime.”

it is not a crime.. the crime is serving one protected group but not another group.

OF the thousands of ways to LEGALLY deny service, please dont deny the service based on the few: religion, race, sex, age, disability… and in most states sexual orientation. 🙂

Peter Leh

I believe in Texas this is legal… for now. We have always been behind the times. In fact I think the last prosecution over slavery happens in Tyler TX in 1942

WorldGoneCrazy

Comparing refusing to bake a gay cake to slavery is actually inverting things. You would have Christians be slaves to gays, and since slavery, like gay “marriage” was once quite legal, I am confident that you would have been quite comfortable with slavery. Time to check your salvation.

Michael C

Huh. You believe that laws that prohibit discrimination are akin to slavery.

interesting.

Prohibiting a public accommodation from refusing service on the basis of a minority status is just like slavery?

wow.

okay.

WorldGoneCrazy

Yes, laws that discriminate against the religious freedoms of individuals are akin to slavery. In fact, that is how our nation was founded – to get away from such laws – the very ones you align with. Thank you for making my point. 🙂

I’m glad you now realize that refusing to bake a cake for a religiously offensive event is not discrimination against an individual but against the event, which is perfectly acceptable in a “tolerant” society. Or, as the poster above put it:

“These bakers did NOT deny gays business because they were gay. They chose not to make a gay wedding cake. If a … homosexual came in and asked for a normal old birthday cake, they wouldn’t kick him out or deny him service,” one reviewer named John wrote. “So, sorry to deny your self-victimization pity party, but there is no discrimination happening here. None. At all.”

Cady555

It is a fancy party cake much like any other cake sold by the bakery. If the baker offers a product for sale, he cannot then say to some people “ewww. I’m not selling it to you.”

WorldGoneCrazy

“It is a fancy party cake much like any other cake sold by the bakery.”

Patently false. You either do not know bakers, have never been married, or have never attended a wedding.

Another example to disprove your thesis is the Washington baker who actually catered her gay friend’s birthday party yet refused to do his gay “wedding.” But, facts are an easy thing to ignore when ideology is all one has.

“he cannot then say to some people “ewww. I’m not selling it to you.””

Strawman. Never happened. If you actually read the article, you would know that these bakers do not turn down gay people, but they do turn down events and certain cake designs which are offensive to their religion. Where is your “tolerance?”

Why do some gay people have a stronger persecution complex than Christians, who have actually, you know, been persecuted? 🙂

Cady555

“I want to buy a fancy cake. I see one here in your brochure that I like.”

“No. I make cakes like that, and I will sell one to someone else but I won’t sell it to you.”

Yes, that is exactly what happened.

WorldGoneCrazy

Citation please.

Guest

All of the cake cases. All were rejected because of their belief-based use for the cake, not any quality of the cake itself.

There is no right to religious discrimination in a public offer, the universal right to religious freedom prevents it.

WorldGoneCrazy

I asked for a citation for the quotes and neither you, nor he, provided one. No citation. Got it.

Guest

I will abjectly apologize to all the autistic people who thought that paraphrase was an actual quote. I won’t apologize to all the people on the losing side of the discussion getting defensively pedantic.

WorldGoneCrazy

Still no citation for the quotes Cady provided. Got it.

I guess when it makes your side look like crybullies, you have to invent all kinds of things.

Guest

Well golly I guess you’ve won, someone paraphrased something – it will all get tossed out in court.

Now if we could only see these supposed ‘death threats’. 😉

Guest

You mean the Washington florist I assume. All business making offers to the public in Washington have to respect the customer’s civil rights which includes ‘full enjoyment of all‘ products and services the business offers, not ‘most’.

Again people forget the issue about blacks at the lunch counter was they could be seated in the dining room, just not at the lunch counter. Civil rights are about equal treatment, not almost equal.

Can’t even be a law that facilitates such discrimination, SCOTUS ruled 9-0 on that in 1993, Scalia included.

Either the business sells wedding cakes to the public of all faiths or don’t offer them to the public and limit their sales to a preselected group by the several legal means to do so, or just not sell wedding cakes at all, many bakeries don’t.

They don’t have the right to refuse a customer because their use failed a religious test, the customers have a right to not share anyone at the businesses religious beliefs and practices.

Guest

If you are referring to the religious freedom of the customers too I agree. The business wouldn’t be offering the public something they couldn’t in good conscience sell to people of all faiths, the business owners know everyone has a constitutional right to not share their religious beliefs, they have a right to their own.

There are many ways the business can operate within their conscience and respecting the rights of others, they just have to care enough to do so.

Michael C

If this is how you feel, I would recommend you contact your local representatives to encourage them to begin work to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

WorldGoneCrazy

Strawman.

Peter Leh

“Comparing refusing to bake a gay cake to slavery is actually inverting things”

the correlation is christians using their religion to without equal protection. It is well documented.

“You would have Christians be slaves to gays”

I would? Quote please.

“Time to check your salvation.”

I was unaware slavery or gay marriage (ie equal protection) was a deal breaker for Jesus. 🙂

Nidalap

“A Christian-identifying couple”? Is that a thing now? Sign of the times. I guess! 🙂

Ja_cob

In our constitutional tradition, freedom means that all persons have the right to believe or strive to believe in a divine creator and a divine law. For those who choose this course, free exercise is essential in preserving their own dignity and in striving for a self definition shaped by their religious precepts. Free exercise in this sense implicates more than just freedom of belief. See Cantell v Connecticut, 301 US 296, 303 (1940). It means, too, the right to express those beliefs and to establish one’s religious (or nonreligious) self definition in the political, civic, and economic life of our larger community.

Under the Dictionary Act, “the wor[d] ‘person’ . . . include[s] corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.” Ibid.; see FCC v. AT&T Inc., 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 6) (“We have no doubt that ‘person,’ in a legal setting, often refers to artificial entities. The Dictionary Act makes that clear”). Thus, unless there is something … that “indicates otherwise,” the Dictionary Act provides a quick, clear, and affirmative answer to the question whether the companies involved in these cases may be heard … no conceivable definition of the term includes natural persons and nonprofit corporations, but not for-profit corporations.20 Cf. Clark v. Martinez, 543 U. S. 371, 378 (2005) (“To give th[e] same words a different meaning for each category would be to invent a statute rather than interpret one”).

As the Court explained … , the “exercise of religion” involves “not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts” that are “engaged in for religious reasons.” Smith, 494 U. S., at 877. Business practices that are compelled or limited by the tenets of a religious doctrine fall comfortably within that definition. Thus, a law that “operates so as to make the practice of . . . religious beliefs more expensive” in the context of business activities imposes a burden on the exercise of religion. Braunfeld, supra, at 605; see United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252, 257 (1982) (recognizing that “compulsory participation in the social security system interferes with [Amish employers’] free exercise rights). (BURWELL v. HOBBY LOBBY STORES, INC.)

Peter Leh

HL and bakers turning away american citizens over protected attributes is apples and oranges.

Ja_cob

As the Court explained … , the “exercise of religion” involves “not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts” that are “engaged in for religious reasons.” Smith, 494 U. S., at 877. Business practices that are compelled or limited by the tenets of a religious doctrine fall comfortably within that definition.

Homophilics. Homophilics are “people who advocate for or are supporters of the interests, civil rights, and welfare of homosexuals are also at times referred as homophilic, a term which is not in current-use in the 21st century. Later the usage of the term also came to refer to an individual who accepts homosexuals, a supporter of certain rights of homosexuals, one who has positive thoughts about homosexuality, or an advocate of its social acceptance.”

Peter Leh

“the “exercise of religion” involves “not only belief and profession but
the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts” that are “engaged
in for religious reasons.”

And?

Ja_cob

The ability to read and reading comprehension are not the same abilities as aptly demonstrated by your reply. Besides what you repeated is what was stated by the Justice writing the majority opinion in the Hobby Lobby case as well as another Justice in their concurring opinion with that of the majority opinion.

Peter Leh

Indeed.

So show me the apples of HL right to spend their own money as they please and the oranges of the bakers violating equal protection laws.

Ja_cob

Unconstitutional equal protection laws which was and never has been the case with anti racial and religion discrimination laws.

Ja_cob

PS: The Court regards Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market of Mass., Inc., 366 U. S. 617 (1961), as “suggest[ing] . . . that for-profit corporations possess [free-exercise] rights.” Ante, at 26–27. See also ante, at 21, n. 21. The suggestion is barely there. True, one of the five challengers to the Sunday closing law assailed in Gallagher was a corporation owned by four Orthodox Jews. The other challengers were human individuals, not artificial, law-created entities, so there was no need to determine whether the corporation could institute the litigation. Accordingly, the plurality stated it could pretermit the question “whether appellees ha[d] standing” because Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U. S. 599 (1961), which upheld a similar closing law, was fatal to their claim on the merits. 366 U. S., at 631.

Guest

This case doesn’t do what you think it does, it is the core of why the ‘blue laws’ fell in most states – the government can’t have laws that are biased towards or against a person because of their beliefs. Similarly to Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993), they said that laws that allow such discrimination are unconstitutional.

Similarly, allowing a person to, after the invitation, apply a religious test to those responding to a public invitation of sale is likewise unconstitutional and illegal as per the Civil Rights Acts at both state and federal levels. Specially the Texas state constitution says the legislature is required to pass such laws necessary to protect equally every religious denomination in the peaceful enjoyment of its own mode of public worship.

Obviously that includes customers who want to buy a cake freely offered to the public to use in a wedding as their beliefs allow.

If a business offers the sale of cakes to the general public they can’t require that the customer’s pass a religious test to actually buy one. And in Texas the legislature is constitutionally required to pass laws that will protect all customers ability to do so according to their beliefs.

As in all these cases the simple solution is not to make a public offer that can’t be sold to people of all faiths. If the business feels then can only sell to people of certain beliefs they need to do so as a private club or non-profit.

Ja_cob

Apparently you’re someone who doesn’t work with their hands and realize those works when involved in making something symbolic, edible or inedible, for themselves or others involves committing or not committing an immoral act. Christian book stores are open to the general public but by your argument they can be sued because they do not sell nor would sell some anything antichristian or anything sacrilegious such as, back to the bakery, two men or women as a man and a woman.

Michael C

Your Christian book store analogy is terribly flawed. Gay couples are not requesting products any different than what the businesses already offer to the general public.

It would be like a gay person entering a Christian book store, picking a book up off the shelf, bringing it up to the counter and and offering money for it.

Ja_cob

Naïve. Marriage is sacred to the Abrahamic religions. What is sacrilege, sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object or person. It can come in the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things. This hard concept for most secularist to grasp and why they show irreverence to what others hold sacred.

Guest

And marriage is just as sacred to the customer. The business has no right to apply a religious test on the customer responding to a public offer.

If you are correct, and this business can only sell to people of certain beliefs, ones that share theirs, then operating via public offers is the wrong way to go. They need to operate a private club or non-profit, use their right of association with just the ‘right’ people, and then make the offer of sale only to them.

Michael C

(I feel like your echo)

Guest

sorry, but the ‘wrong headedness’ of his replies are motivating me 🙂 But it does show that his errors in logic and jurisprudence are both obvious and clear.

Michael C

A baker is going to have a hard time defending the idea that a cake is a sacred object to be reserved for religious purpose when that very baker freely exchanges that product for money with any customer who walks through the door, no questions asked.

If a business wishes to sell sacrament cakes only to those who share their religious beliefs, opening a public accommodation is not the way to do it.

Leslie

Except that they have also refused cakes for other people if that design also violated s views.

Michael C

These couples are asking for cakes no different than what the bakers regularly sells to other customers.

These bakers are not refusing service because they are offended by the requested product but instead because they are offended by the customer.

customer: “I would like to purchase a cake identical to the one you sold the customer in line in front of me.

baker: “No, I only sell cakes that look like that to straight people.”

Guest

Apparently you haven’t worked in the wedding industry. You order wedding cake on the top of page 4 in the cake book, pick a color frosting, what dragees and flourishes as you would like, a color and a cake flavor/and or filling. A wedding cake is no more ’symbolic’ than a lunch counter poorboy sandwich, and saying that making food is a protected art would mean a business could say they don’t sell ‘black’ sandwiches.

And the bookstore reference shows that you really don’t understand this issue. The business is freely offering wedding cakes for sale, they are being asked to supply nothing other than what they have of their own free will offered to the general public as being for sale. In NONE of these cases has the customer been rejected for a quality of what they were ordering but merely because of their beliefs about its proper use.

Ja_cob

Opinion. It is. Read.

Guest

No, the opinion is about if they can stay open on a particular day. It was about religious belief vs the government, not other people. At no time does it say that this business can only serve people of certain beliefs.

Ja_cob

There has always been a lot of symbolism associated with the wedding cake. The earliest known sweet wedding cake is known as a Banbury cake, which became popular in 1655.[10] During the Roman era unsweetened barley bread was used as the wedding food and the groom would break the piece of bread in half over the brides head symbolizing “breaking of the bride’s virginal state and the subsequent dominance of the groom over her.” One of the most obvious symbolic traditions is the cake’s white color to symbolize virginity and purity. The white color has been attached to wedding ceremonies since Victorian era ueen Victoria chose to wear a white wedding dress at her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840. Queen Victoria accentuated an existing symbol, the color white is frequently associated with virginity and purity. The wedding cake was originally known as the brides cake therefore the color white became common because the cake needed to reflect the bride.

Guest

Nice history lesson but has nothing to do with the wedding cakes offered by these businesses to the general public. There couldn’t even be a law that facilitated legally applying a religious test to a customer before letting them buy a publicly offered product or service. Whether it be goats for slaughter or wedding cakes the customer can use their purchase for any religious usage then want even if its one the business wouldn’t do themselves.

Cady555

Yes. The bakers can and do make the exact same cake for other customers. The product is not unique. It is the customer that is “different” not the product. This is discrimination.

Leslie

Except its not the same product. You’re talking about a specially designed product…special order. Not just buying copycat products off the shelf. The cookies in the case…it doesn’t matter if it’s the pope or a satanist buying them. Something special-ordered and personalized is different. If a tattoo artist inks people with patriotic symbols and “I love Mother” types of stuff all day, then refuses to ink some racist neocon’s hate speech, is he discriminating?

Guest

Not the case, we are talking about where the ‘tattooist’ would tattoo one customer with ‘I love Mother’ and not the next asking for the same thing (and that such a thing was part of a civil rights class…)

acontraryview

“Apparently you’re someone who doesn’t work with their hands and realize those works when involved in making something symbolic, edible or inedible, for themselves or others involves committing or not committing an immoral act.”

How would the act of baking and decorating a cake be “immoral”?

acontraryview

“but by your argument they can be sued because they do not sell nor would sell some anything antichristian or anything sacrilegious”

No, that is not the argument. To use your example of the bookstore. If the bookstore refused to sell the books it offers to a Satanist, then the store would be in violation of anti-discrimination laws. The store is not required to carry any particular items. That is up to the owner. But the items it does offer for sale may not be denied to a customer in violation of anti-discrimination laws.

Paige Turner

Incorrect.

You cannot tell a book shop owner which books to sell. That is his/her choice however if he/she chooses not to sell a book to someone because they are gay, then that is discrimination.

Bakers bake cakes. If they refuse to sell them to certain members of society then that is discrimination. If they will sell wedding cakes to straight couples then not selling wedding cakes to gay couples is discrimination.

The solution is to either sell cakes to everyone or no one.

Peter Leh

“Unconstitutional equal protection laws”

seem to me only those who lost power think equal protection unconstitutional. 🙂

Ja_cob

There are instances. Oregon is one and Houston is another. The number of unconstitutional state and local laws and ordinances is rather long already will get even longer because of violations of free exercise protections.

Peter Leh

what happened in Houston?

Guest

Again, there is no religious right to make public offers and then require responding customers to pass a religious test to actually accept the offer. The solution is to not make the public offer at all, or to not apply a religious test.

Their choice.

Ja_cob

What, at least to you, is a graven image or imagery? On a cake or anything else?

Guest

Red herrings won’t save you – not in this case or any other has the design of the specific cake even been discussed before the customer was rejected. They were rejected because of the belief-based usage they were going to use their purchase for.

Leslie

How do you know what was or wasn’t discussed during the design phase? They could have said, “…and we’d like the whole thing topped off with a figurine.”

Guest

Because the bakery owners themselves have told us why they rejected them, it was because they were having a wedding they didn’t like, they’ve never said it was because of cake design.

Leslie

The couple brought in a picture of the cake they wanted made. She then asked who the cake was for. It’s reasonable to conclude that that there was something about the design that led her to ask, especially since she later explained the other designs that they’ve refused (Skoal can, etc.).

Guest

We know the cake that was shown to them (picture on the web) and we know what an owner said to them:

Edie Delorme, co-owner of Kern’s with her husband, David, said she was up-front when the couple replied. “And when they said it was them, I said, ‘Sorry. We don’t provide cakes for homosexual marriages,’” from the local paper

Didn’t have a thing to do with the cake design itself by the owners own words.

acontraryview

“have free exercise rights and failure to accommodate one’s exercise of this fundamental right is unconstitutional or more simply put unlawful.”

That is not true. Citizens are protected from Congress (and via the 14th Amendment, the states) passing laws which PROHIBIT the expression of religious belief. There is nothing in the Constitution which provides a right of citizens to express their religious beliefs in any manner, in any place, and at any time, they care to. The government is not required to accommodate all expressions of religious belief.

As with all rights, there are restrictions. None are provided carte blanch.

It’s interesting that you cite SCOTUS rulings when you believe they support your position, but you fail to acknowledge SCOTUS rulings that have found that anti-discrimination do NOT violate protections provided by the 1st Amendment. Seems a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?

Guest

No, you don’t understand Hobby Lobby. It was decided solely because it was a ‘person’ vs the government, one reason they have gone to such lengths to make sure the actual employees of HL have access to the medical coverage for free because it would take just one valid claim from an actual person to unravel the decision.

This is a case of a ‘person’ vs other persons all with their own right to religious liberty. The business invited the public to buy from them, a public where each and every person has a right to their own religious freedom. There is no right to make a public offer and then apply a religious test on those that respond rejecting some, their own right to religious freedom shields them from such invidious acts.

If baking a cake is a ‘religious act’ for them they shouldn’t have been offering to sell them to the general public which has a constitutional right to not share the religious beliefs of the business, its owner or anyone working there. That’s why private clubs and non-profits are allowed to use their freedom of association, find the ‘right’ people first and then extend the invitation of sale to just them.

There is no right to religious discrimination of other people with their own right to religious freedom once they have been invited to do business.

Absolutely! If this business can not sell cakes as the law requires they are under no obligation to offer them for sale. And unless you are saying that their beliefs require them to sell cakes (some offshoot of the Pastapharians) their solution is to not make cakes at all.

They have a right to their freedom of conscience, not to sell cakes to only people with the right beliefs.

Ja_cob

What is sacrilegious to a Jew may not be to a Christian or what is sacrilegious to a Christian may not be to a Jew or Moslem. The fundamental element of any argument regarding free exercise is the concept of sacrilege as it applies to persons, places, and things regardless of if its for sell or not. Least not we forget in addition to the right to “contract” or not and basis for and against doing so.

Guest

Exactly! And if you can’t sell something to people of all faiths, making a public offer to a public where each member has their own right to religious freedom is the wrong way to go about it.

Use your kosher grocery store. Yes they can stay open on Sunday, the government can’t stop them, but when a customer comes in they can’t refuse to sell to a Gentile, or to someone who won’t swear they have two refrigerators – one for dairy, one for meat. What belief based usage the customer does with their purchase is none of the business’s concern because its right to religious freedom stops at the tip of the customer’s nose where their own begins.

Ja_cob

? A wedding cake is a bride’s cake. A wedding gown store cannot be sued because it doesn’t sell a groom’s tuxedo.

Guest

But if a man came in and asked to buy a dress for his marriage and they had one in his size they couldn’t refuse to sell him one.

Again, there is no right to religious discrimination in a public offer.

Guest

A wedding cake is a style of cake that can be used in a wedding, a high school play as a prop, a door stop or a whatever the customer wants to use it for.

And again, you think homosexuals are new to weddings? I attended my first in the late 70’s in Washington state. Don’t confuse access to the civil contract of marriage with the religious rite – gays and lesbians have been being married since before you were born.

Ja_cob

Like in transgenderism? I don’t think so.

Guest

Your question makes no sense.

Ambulance Chaser

You’re still missing the point. Wedding gown stores that don’t sell tuxedos can’t be compelled to start on the basis of equal protection for genders. However, they CAN be compelled to sell wedding gowns to men.

Also, anyone can be sued, by anyone, for any cause of action, at any time for any reason. It doesn’t mean the suit is meritorious.

acontraryview

“Sort of reminds one of seeing someone in a seafood restaurant ordering a hamburger and French fries and then suing them because there not served what they ordered.”

Why would it remind you of that? Businesses are not required to offer certain products. If a seafood restaurant does not offer hamburgers, there would be no basis for a lawsuit. They are not required to offer hamburgers. Now, if a seafood restaurant DID offer hamburgers, they would be required to offer that hamburger in a manner which did not violate anti-discrimination laws.

Ja_cob

A wedding cake is a bride’s cake. As to its religious symbolism, the bride’s cake is like the “host” in communion but in this instance the body of the bride or woman. Remember that the tradition of the bride’s cake was instituted by the Head of the Church of England, Queen Victoria, and in a marriage there is a bride and groom but in a so called same sex marriage there is no bride nor groom. So why harass a baker.

acontraryview

So you can’t state why a baker refusing to make a cake for a wedding reception of two people of the same gender would remind you of a seafood restaurant not serving hamburgers. Got it. Thanks.

You are certainly free to attach whatever meaning you care to regarding a cake for a wedding reception. Your views on it, however, are not relevant to anti-discrimination laws.

I would also add that you would be hard pressed to find many people who, if asked what a wedding cake symbolizes would answer: “It is a bride’s cake and is like the “host” in communion”.

Ja_cob

To the Abrahamic religions followers that which is grossly irreverent towards what is held to be scared such as blasphemous rites of a witches Sabbath, blasphemous rites of homosexuals marriage, profane utterances against the Church and beliefs regarding marriage and divorce, are all forms of sacrilege.

Guest

Exactly! Why would such a person make an invitation of sale to a group with such people in it?! Knowing they are required by the constitution and the law to respect those customers right to those beliefs?!

The court has determined that since anti-discrimination laws apply to all businesses of public accommodation, regardless of the religious beliefs or lack thereof, of the owner, they do not violate the 1st Amendment.

acontraryview

“As the Court explained … , the “exercise of religion” involves “not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts” that are “engaged in for religious reasons.” Smith, 494 U. S., at 877. ”

Please see above regarding your misuse of Smith.

acontraryview

Apparently you missed, or found it to be a convenient omission, this part of Employment Div. v Smith

“As a textual matter, we do not think the words must be given that meaning. It is no more necessary to regard the collection of a general tax, for example, as “prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]” by those citizens who believe support of organized government to be sinful than it is to regard the same tax as “abridging the freedom . . . of the press” of those publishing companies that must pay the tax as a condition of staying in business. It is a permissible reading of the text, in the one case as in the other, to say that, if prohibiting the exercise of religion (or burdening the activity of printing) is not the object of the tax, but merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, the First Amendment has not been offended.”

Since the object of anti-discrimination laws is not to burden the free exercise of religion, anti-discrimination laws do not violate protections provided by the 1st Amendment.

Michael C

Yes, even though the marriages of gay couples are legally recognized throughout the nation, it remains perfectly legal to discriminate against gay people in most of the country.

The majority of states and cities do not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This means that it is perfectly legal to refuse housing, employment, and public accommodations just because a person is gay.

Nowhere in the United States is it legal to refuse housing, employment, or public accommodations just because someone is Christian.

Oshtur

So you wish to be able to discriminate against Christians legally?

Why is that?

Michael C

I believe that people of all faiths should have equal access to all that civil society has to offer.

I also believe that gay and trans people deserve the same rights.

Oshtur

Wow, I am just so in awe of your deep compassion. Just so touching.

Cady555

Nothing justifies death threats.

Atheists also receive death threats when they stand up to.Christian privilege.

That said, the article did not provide any information past the repeated generic phrasing “they got death threats”. Given that both Liberty Counsel and Todd Starnes often have an agenda, I wonder why there are no specifics.

Guest

My question too. One person tried to imply saying ‘see you in Hell’ was threatening which is ironic since regular writers on this board routinely predict someone else’s piety is inadequate to get them into heaven. Predicting where someone will go after they die isn’t a death threat to mortal beings. Saying “See you in heaven” is just as much a threat.

acontraryview

Odd that although they say they received death threats, they never actually cite the death threats.

With that said, there is absolutely no justification for any threats of violence against a person for their personal views. While I am certainly a big supporter of freedom of speech, I don’t think that incendiary comments serve any purpose.

Cady555

The baker is selling “fancy party cakes.” It is none of the bakers business what the customer does after the product is delivered.

This is different from the Skoal shaped cake where there is something unique about the cake itself.

Guest

The only think I would change is it is the bakery that is being asked. If an employee has a religious objection to making the cake they can ask for religious accommodation and someone else can make it, the business owner can hire a temp baker, or they can even 3rd party contract out the task if that option is listed as a potential source of the cake.

One reason the Elane Photography studio case lost is that they had hired temp photographers in the past so if one didn’t want to they could get another that would want to be paid.

Mikey0

So……will you work for me? No. Then you are a bigot and a homophobe. What? You know, forced labor is sometimes referred to as slavery. Was this a random event? Did the couple just stumble across this bakery? I doubt that very much.

Guest

Oh you have the scenario wrong. Its:

You invited me to buy these things knowing we all have a constitutional and legal right to our own beliefs and now you are saying you won’t sell to me because of mine.

Why did you illegally deceive me?

M J

These sexually malfunctioning animals (animals behave better than this!) are using their “Gay” (nothing gay about it, time to take that word back for happy and cheerful, not perverted!) excuse to be what they really are – another form of terrorist! One couple who sank their life’s blood into their passion, their own cake shop, have lost that shop after a 2 year drag through Gay and Legal HELL, after refusing to accept what they have the GOD GIVEN FREEDOM NOT TO ACCEPT! Their lives have been destroyed and they are now fighting back, but it should not have gone this far, had some unelected judge NOT become a communist (someone who forces others to do what they should not have to do – sodomite) sympathizer!

Paige Turner

Are you referring to sweetcakes by Melissa? They are grifters of the highest order and nothing in your post is accurate as far as the facts of the case are concerned.

acontraryview

I’m curious, given her strong religious beliefs, how she justifies serving homosexuals given 1 Corinthians 5:9.

Semp

You never opened a Bible in your life.

stinkerbean

It just goes back to “think as I do or we will destroy you” . I personally are not only tired of this crap but disgusted by it too. They not only make it harder for businessman but also for gays and lesbians because it makes people see that they are becoming disgusting human beings. If they owned a business wouldn’t they want to be able to enjoy their craft and stand by their principles? At this point it shows them as intolerant jackasses.

Guest

Don’t offer something to the public you can’t sell to people of all faiths is the solution here. The business owners knew that the customers have a right to not share their beliefs before they invited the public to buy their wares.

stinkerbean

Your analogy doesn’t quite fit but whatever. As you say they provide a service. They also explained thgast they don’t make certain cakes for bachelor or bachelorette parties. But you are saying they don’t have a choice when it comes to gays. As a customer I live in the real world and don’t expect everyone to think or approve of everything I like or do. It is ones right. Owner or not. It is a thing called respect. As a customer if I don’t like it I have many other options. They are NOT the only bakery in town. And as a customer I DO NOT have the right to destroy their business just because I don’t like their answer. Thew more the LGBT crowd causes trouble and can’t seem to get along the more people will disapprove and resent them. They do this at their own peril.

Michael C

There was no analogy in Guest’s comment. Were you referring to my comment?

You say that they don’t make cakes for bachelorette parties. Where did you read that?

If what you’re saying is that they don’t make cakes with sexual imagery on them, that’s fine. Nobody is saying that they should. Gay couples aren’t asking bakers to bake cakes with sexual imagery. They’re just asking for cakes that look no different than what the bakers willingly sell to other customers.

These bakers aren’t refusing service because they find the cake request offensive, they’re refusing service because they find the customer offensive.

stinkerbean

Where does it say they find the customer offensive? If you are saying they find the act of being Gay offensive then that is their right. You are telling me just because they sell a certain product they can’t “target” who they want to sell it to? If you don’t like the military should they be subjected to abuse even though it is because of them you have your freedom. It is religious freedom that they can choose who to sell to. They offered them another baker so they wouldn’t be indisposed but no that wasn’t good enough. They tried to destroy their business. If you can’t behave humanely then just shut up. It will come back to bite you.
As for my bachelorette statement sorry it was “risque cakes” mainly used for those parties ie: penis, boobs, etc. Just in case you didn’t get it.

Michael C

You are telling me just because they sell a certain product they can’t “target” who they want to sell it to?

That is correct.

If you don’t like the military should they be subjected to abuse even though it is because of them you have your freedom.

This doesn’t seem to be a fully formed thought. Are you talking about a bakery refusing to sell a wedding cake to an active servicemember? Perhaps you could explain this a little better. I cannot respond to this question as it is.

They offered them another baker so they wouldn’t be indisposed but no that wasn’t good enough.

Like this article says, it’s legal to refuse service to a customer just because they’re gay in the vast majority of Texas (including Longview).

In areas where discriminating against gay people is prohibited, refusing service then letting the customer know that the lunch counter across the street serves gay people is still considered discrimination.

They tried to destroy their business. If you can’t behave humanely then just shut up.

I agree that writing false reviews or making threats is absolutely unacceptable behavior. Criticizing a business publicly for how they conduct their business is 100% a-okay. Financially destroying a business by organizing a boycott is an example of exactly how capitalism and the free-market works.

As for my bachelorette statement sorry it was “risque cakes”

The difference between a cake for a bachelorette party and a “risque cake” is what negates your argument. You were trying to claim that they can refuse service on the basis of event where the cake would be eaten. That has nothing to do with why they would refuse to make a cake with obscene imagery. They wouldn’t make a cake with obscene imagery regardless of what type of event it would be eaten at.

Guest

My analogy? I was talking about religious discrimination by the business in my note, which they are doing without question. And ‘what I am saying’ is they don’t have a choice to run their business illegally – they, by constitution and statute, can’t refuse a customer because of their membership in a civil rights class.

And as Michael points out, this isn’t about how the cake looks – not a single case as been about what the cake looks like.

And what you as a customer would do is up to you – some blacks were more than happy to sit at back of the bus, many were ok with not being able to sit at the lunch counter, or not use the pool at the hotel they were staying at.

But others wanted equal civil rights, so do people who’s beliefs include the idea that God blesses couples getting married regardless of their sexes.

And the idea that the more the gays get ‘uppity’ that people will be against them probably only applies to your friends. In other parts of the country finding out that people were discriminated against by a business makes other potential customers not want to give their money to the business. Take in Oregon, Melissa’s Sweet Cakes had to close before even a state decision had been reached – they lost not only most of their wedding business but their walk in business too. Who wants to do business with someone who runs their business unethically, that thinks they can refuse customers because of their membership in a civil rights class? I don’t and won’t, obviously enough others think the same way to make the business fail.

And it failed because of the bad choices and illegal acts of the business owners, not because of the ethical and legal acts of the people they depended on keeping their business running.

Michael C

It just goes back to “think as I do or we will destroy you” .

Not really. It’s more like “treat me like you treat everyone else.” Customers and business owners don’t have think the same way. It should not matter to the business owner how the customer thinks. If the business owner sells products to the general public (is a public accommodation), all of the products that they offer should be available to their customers. Imagine a restaurant that has items on the menu that it refuses to serve to a certain type of person. Imagine a Jewish person sitting down at a restaurant, requesting an item off of the menu and being told, sorry, we don’t serve that meal to Jews.

Lummi

I have to wonder if the gays have any idea as to how much this kind of legalized bullying of small business owners has done to turn what were once tolerant people against them. I knew the owners of a gay-owned bakery in my city. It was the “go-to” place for special orders, with wedding cakes being their specialty. However, I can say with certainty that they would never agree to provide a cake with an anti-gay message for the Westboro Baptist Church’s rabidly anti-gay fascists. It would be akin to demanding that a black print shop be required to supply the banners for a Klan rally. It’s not as though the Delormes denied this couple a critical service that wasn’t readily available elsewhere, or that lives were at stake due to the bakers’ declining to serve them. It simply comes down to a couple of small minded, petulant gays playing the victim game, knowing that they have the power of an abetting government behind them while their targets stand alone.

Guest

Probably not much at all, since tolerant people don’t tolerate civil right discrimination. The same people who cheered on Rosa Parks should cheer on this too. Expecting businesses to obey the law and respect the beliefs of the customers they wiling advertised to isn’t ‘bullying’.

scottrose

People who define “persecution” as “one bakery in town won’t bake me a cake” obviously have no clue what real suffering is.

Ja_cob

Facts. Same sex weddings are not legally recognized in most countries and by most religions including Christians. Weddings for gay and lesbians are very diverse patterned closely after traditional weddings and others created ex nihilo. A wedding cake is a brides cake and in a same sex wedding there is no “bride” nor “groom” nor “wife” or “husband,” to end such a wedding with “I pronounce you married. You may kiss your husband.” Further, same sex weddings are more known as “commitment ceremonies” rather than “wedding ceremonies” because they are in fact a legally recognized partnership such as a civil union in reality not a marriage that is between persons of the opposite sex.

Guest

Facts:

1) A wedding can be held without having to have a civil contract of marriage involved. That the state doesn’t legally recognize the couple as married has nothing to do with having a wedding, e.g. nuns all have a wedding with Jesus Christ – no law being broken and yes, a florist would have to sell flowers or a cake for it.

2) A wedding cake is a style of cake and a bride need have nothing to do with it. And reserving a style of cake for just a person of a particular sex would just be another kind of civil rights violation.

3) Commitment ceremonies can be held for people regardless of their sexes and they can buy a publicly offered sale of wedding cakes for them. The belief based usage of something the customer buys is not any of the businesses concern.

Jac_ob is trying very hard to make a wedding cake as something special that a business can break the civil rights laws in selling but has failed miserably.

Either the business sells wedding cakes to the public respecting the customer’s civil rights or they shouldn’t be selling them to the public at all.

Ja_cob

A cake is one thing. A brides cake is another. A brides cake is a specialty food for most of those of the Christian faiths. Your argument can be used against a Halal or Kosher bakery which would illustrate how fallacious your argument is.

Guest

If the business thinks they are selling a cake only suitably sold to this of particular beliefs they shouldn’t to publicly offering them.

Ja_cob

A sacrilegious thing nonetheless.

Guest

Then don’t offer to sell them to the general public with that annoying freedom of religion thing they have.

Problem solved! Whew!!!

Ja_cob

“that no man professing to believe in Jesus Christ should ever be in any manner troubled, molested, or discountenanced on account of his religion,” An enactment to deliver men from the horrors of religious persecution.

Ja_cob

Rehabilitation begins with recognition and acknowledgement. Both our law enforcement and mental health institutions had little success in the past but it does not mean that rehabilitation can be achieved in the future.

Guest

I doubt many people with a need to religiously discrimination against others are going to admit it is a problem that needs treatment.

Ja_cob

Homosexuals specifically and the age old problem of buggery in general that is.

Guest

Every person has all the genetic information necessary to be attracted to either sex, both or neither. And in a society based on individual rights they all have the same rights to it.

And the mention of only one sex act, performed by the same relative % of straight couples as gay ones validates the nagging suspicion that you are you are just trying to rationalize a prejudice.

Ja_cob

It was and remains in the view of most a self control problem producing unnatural rewards from behaviors some believe are entirely voluntary. Taq I A1 allele of
the DRD2 gene related disorder? The movies The Awakening and Boulevard come to mind as well as the star in those life. There are natural and unnatural rewards and fortunately there still are researchers doing research in this area of concern and haven’t given up as some have.

Guest

not a common view at all, far more reasonable to just realize some people are attracted to men, others women and there are people of both sexes in each group, particularly in males. We know that sexual dimorphism occurs late in the third trimester where overwriting of the base female patterns occur. that there is variable presentation of this over write is expectable and probably would be miraculous if they didn’t occur.

Simply put men are attracted to men for the same reason many women are – it’s the way they are neurologically wired.

Ja_cob

Attracted or simply a case of hypersexuality due to a polygenetic disorder? The rewards are the same but one is a natural reward and the other unnatural. Again strongly consider the life and film portrayals of the star in the Awakening and his last movie.

Quantz

There are those who see the homosexual couples “targeting” Christian bakeries, which to me is totally absurd – if you know the bakers in question were bigots, I doubt you’d want to go there in the first place. It’s most likely a matter of both sides finding out about the other at the same time.
“Oh – it’s a homosexual wedding?”
“Oh – you’re Christian supremacist bakers?”
At which point the sparks are bound to fly.

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